Using the default Spotlight search, you can find installed applications, Bookmarks & History (Safari browser), Documents, Folders, Images, Music, Movies, Presentations, Spreadsheets, and more. The default search function is limited to first-party apps and a handful of third-party services.

Let’s talk about the prime reason to choose a third-party Spotlight Search alternative. Go to the Alfred Preferences menu, and you can choose from dozens of fonts to customize the experience. We mostly prefer Alfred’s default macOS theme as it blends smartly with the macOS.Īlfred easily beats when it comes to font customization. You can pick one out of the ten themes, including a classic theme, dark theme, teal one, high contrast, and more. Go to the Alfred Preferences menu and open Appearance. With the v4.0, the company took the theming part seriously and added many options. Switch to a dark theme, and the Spotlight Search menu follows that with a similar look.Īlfred used to look a bit outdated compared to Apple’s default solution. The default Spotlight Search has a grey theme, and it matches perfectly fine with the rest of the OS.

Let’s talk a bit about how the search bar looks on both the Spotlight Search and Alfred 4. You can pick one of the two and assign a hotkey combination for a better workflow. All you need to do is, assign a different keyword for Alfred 4 and keep the default Command + Space shortcut for the Spotlight Search. You can easily use Spotlight Search and Alfred 4 side-by-side. Using Spotlight and Alfred 4 Simultaneously

Spotlight search mac shortcut